When the Republic is Over

     …turn out the lights.

     Angelo M. Cordvilla, over at the Claremont Institute, gives an all too accurate description of how America is ceasing to be a Republic, and is mutating into a full-blown Roman-style empire.

“In fact, the 2016 election is sealing the United States’s transition from that republic to some kind of empire.

“Electing either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump cannot change that trajectory. Because each candidate represents constituencies hostile to republicanism, each in its own way, these individuals are not what this election is about. This election is about whether the Democratic Party, the ruling class’s enforcer, will impose its tastes more strongly and arbitrarily than ever, or whether constituencies opposed to that rule will get some ill-defined chance to strike back. Regardless of the election’s outcome, the republic established by America’s Founders is probably gone. But since the Democratic Party’s constituencies differ radically from their opponents’, and since the character of imperial governance depends inherently on the emperor, the election’s result will make a big difference in our lives.”

     A little mood music:

     Benjamin Franklin did warn us that we’d have a Republic… if we could keep it.

     Clearly, we couldn’t, at least not for long.

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